I don't disagree moremilk, and I'm not into the conspiracy, but what if another Arthur Andersen was involved? Inexplicably stupid and corrupt shit is pretty epidemic these days, all the much more so amongst professions that require the best reputation.

the thing with fraud, at least i feel, is everyone has a price, whether they will admit it or not. everyone has a price. so fraud is always possible but i don't see the incentive for the NBA in this scenario, especially when the reputation of the league is on the line. i can see fraud in the form of accepting under-the-table payments for TV contracts or apparel endorsements, but to keep a shitty team in a shitty market afloat? I don't see it.

You do realize that fixing the lottery would be illegal, right? An NDA is meant to make it easier to sue people - it only has an use in court. It's like saying that the mafia should use NDAs to stop people from talking to the cops ... What's the NBA going to do if some guy goes public with this knowledge, sue them?

As far as the accounting firm, you MUST be joking. The very existence of an audit firm is tied to their reputation. They are hired for the explicit purpose to ensure the draft is not rigged. If they fail (and worse, they are part of the cover-up), they will almost certainly go bankrupt. Even if they don't lose all their clients right away, they would be sued by every team who ever was part of the lottery and didn't win ... Look up Arthur Andersen to see what a major scandal does to an audit firm. They used to be as big as PWC or Ernst and Young a decade ago.

And finally, the draft is public, there's media in the draft room to observe the process. Why would they televise it anyway, everything is done in a computer, they press a button and the results are spit out - it probably takes a milisecond. Which btw means that the programmers would have to be part of the conspiracy as well.

And again, why would they do it - what can they possibly gain from it? Not to mention that if they are doing it, how come NYK or Boston didn't win the lottery in all the years they've been in it? How come they sent lebron to Cleveland of all places, and now they send Davis to NO rather than to NJ?

i thought they used a lottery ball machine? also, how would they audit the scripts that they're using? that doesn't make sense to me. what would be the purpose of them being hired past giving a legitimacy to the draft when they would have anything to audit past a possible script that they probably wouldn't understand.

what benefit would someone have going public about the draft if the NBA will just squash him afterwards. i'd understand them being blackmailed, but going public after they've already committed bad business ethics? no sense to me.

also, i don't think it's illegal to being with. unless there's something written in the CBA somewhere.

but yeah

i don't think it's rigged, nor do i care. i'd rather us not have to worry about nights like last night unless it's someone else's pick for us.

from my understanding, if it's fixed for entertainment purposes, it's legal. it it's fixed for gambling purposes, it's illegal. being that there's a show based around the outcome, it serves as entertainment. i've never seen a vegas line on the lottery.

from reading about the process, they use a lottery ball machine, so i really don't know what moremilk is talking about. maybe he can provide a link.

i get that the lottery is observed by the audit firm and the team representatives, but how do they not know the outcome of the lottery when they're sitting there observing? are they pretending that they don't know when they're sitting there sweating? or do they not understand the process of how the winner is determined.

although it would possibly kill the anticipation, they could easily squash all rumours of the lottery being rigged if they even showed it once, or even after the fact. the nba hasn't gone out of the way to really kill the rumours that have been around since the very first draft lottery. these coincidental wins only add fuel to the fire.

from my understanding, if it's fixed for entertainment purposes, it's legal. it it's fixed for gambling purposes, it's illegal. being that there's a show based around the outcome, it serves as entertainment. i've never seen a vegas line on the lottery.

from reading about the process, they use a lottery ball machine, so i really don't know what moremilk is talking about. maybe he can provide a link.

i get that the lottery is observed by the audit firm and the team representatives, but how do they not know the outcome of the lottery when they're sitting there observing? are they pretending that they don't know when they're sitting there sweating? or do they not understand the process of how the winner is determined.

although it would possibly kill the anticipation, they could easily squash all rumours of the lottery being rigged if they even showed it once, or even after the fact. the nba hasn't gone out of the way to really kill the rumours that have been around since the very first draft lottery. these coincidental wins only add fuel to the fire.

The representative you see on TV are not the ones who see the draw. The members who see the draw and the media are held in the room with no cell phones until after the broadcast. The people you see on TV, like Casey this year, don't know the result.

I much prefer seeing the envelope approach afterwards than having to have a spreadsheet of possible lottery ball combos to track as they come up.

The representative you see on TV are not the ones who see the draw. The members who see the draw and the media are held in the room with no cell phones until after the broadcast. The people you see on TV, like Casey this year, don't know the result.

I much prefer seeing the envelope approach afterwards than having to have a spreadsheet of possible lottery ball combos to track as they come up.

why would you have to track the lottery ball combos?

a lottery is something too simple to make complicated. i understand that they want the suspense of a count down, but why would anything need to be tracked?

1st gets 250 balls
2nd gets 199 balls
3rd gets 156 balls

whoever draws first wins, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th. the odds are there.

did i misunderstand you there?

i'm more than curious if there's a definitely explanation on how they do it. i know at the lottery they mention 14 balls being placed into the lottery machine, but that doesn't make sense. moremilk doesn't know what he's talking about, and you're saying something completely different.

a lottery is something too simple to make complicated. i understand that they want the suspense of a count down, but why would anything need to be tracked?

1st gets 250 balls
2nd gets 199 balls
3rd gets 156 balls

whoever draws first wins, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th. the odds are there.

did i misunderstand you there?

i'm more than curious if there's a definitely explanation on how they do it. i know at the lottery they mention 14 balls being placed into the lottery machine, but that doesn't make sense. moremilk doesn't know what he's talking about, and you're saying something completely different.

They place 14 balls with the numbers 1 through 14 on them in the machine. They will draw 4 balls. If you look at the total number of combination possibilities of 4 balls drawn from a selection of 14, there are 1001 possible outcomes (if you ignore the order, as they do - so 1,2,3,4 is the same as 4,3,2,1). One of these (11,12,13,14) is ignored. Then the rest of the 1000 combinations are assigned to the various teams - 250 of the combinations to the top team, 199 combinations to the 2nd team, etc - to establish the percentage point probabilities of winning you list above.

Then when the 4 balls are drawn, the combination of numbers tells you what team won the lottery. The balls are placed back in and another combination of 4 is drawn. If that combination is 11,12,13,14 or assigned to a team's pick that has already been drawn, then they redo it.

The combinations are posted to be seen before and during the draw by all attending personnel (including media members) so they can all confirm that the random drawing is indeed connected to the correct teams.